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Saturday, 3 October 2009

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

I have never thought that I would venture into making baked mooncakes. I chickened out after going through the ingredient list for making traditional baked mooncakes ^_^"

I was glad that I managed to get hold of this "Y3K cookbook, Mooncakes". Besides the snowskin mooncakes, I was happy to learn that I could actually try my hand at making mooncakes with flaky pastry! I nailed down this 'Apple Allure' flaky pastry mooncake recipe since I had all the ingredients on hand. Making the doughs was a breeze, but I had a hard time trying to figure out the correct way of wrapping/rolling the water dough with the coloured oil dough. Even though there are several photos to illustrate the steps, certain parts of the instructions is quite vague. In the end, I went about making it with my gut feel. I am not sure whether I did it right as the finished mooncakes appeared slightly different from those illustrated in the cookbook.

These tiny morsels are no bigger than 2", my tween is able to pop one into his mouth without getting choked. I used ready-made pandan lotus paste but I think it would taste better with yam paste. Since this is my maiden attempt, I am rather satisfied with the taste and texture. On the other hand, I think I could have done better. I probably didn't roll out the dough thin enough so the skin is not as flaky and definitely not comparable to those store-bought Teochew style mooncakes. Nevertheless, I felt a great sense of achievements when I left them to cool on the rack.

Water Dough: sieve together flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl. Rub in shortening with fingertips until the mixture becomes crumbly. Add in the water and mix to form a soft dough. Cover with cling wrap and set aside.

Oil Dough: Sieve plain flour into a mixing bowl. Add shortening and mix with hand to form a soft dough.

Divide oil dough into 3 portions. Add food colourings to each dough and knead to form pink, yellow and green doughs. Roll each dough into a square, about 5" by 5".

Roll the water dough into a square about 10" by 10". Place the oil doughs in the centre of the water dough. Start with pink, then place yellow dough over the pink dough, overlapping end bit of pink dough. Place green dough over the yellow dough, overlapping end bit of yellow dough. Refer photo no. 1 below.

Fold both sides of the water dough over the oil doughs. Cover and let rest for 20mins. Refer photo no. 2 and 3.

Flatten all sides and roll out the dough. Turn over and roll flat. Starting with the pink side of the dough(refer photo no. 4 above), roll up Swiss roll style to form a cylindrical log. Cut off excess parts from both ends and keep aside. Cut the dough into 16 equal portions.

For each portion, flatten to form a round disc. Roll to about 5cm in diameter.Wrap the filling with the dough, seal the seams and place it downwards on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Add some green food colouring to the excess dough in step 7 and use it to make leaves. With the pointed end of a chopstick, press the top of the dough to create a slight dent that resembles the surface of an apple. Place the leaves over the dents. Bake at 180degC for 15-20 mins until baked through but not golden. As the finished mooncake will be very soft, let cool on the baking tray for about 5 ~ 10mins before transferring to a wire rack. Let cool completely.

So so pretty... much nicer than those from 5* hotels!!Amazing.U know what, after 3 months, I still couldn't bake a soft bread, my bread is hard as rock the next day and I still couldn't figure out why.I think I will never gonna dare to try this out.

Hi i want to bake your pizza recipe but wanted to know if you use the bottled Maggi tomato sauce (those use for dipping with fries) to spread on the pizza dough. Cos buying a special pasta sauce is more costly. Thks :)

They are so pretty. They sure did not look small in the pictures. I hope I have time to make them (actually doesnt need to wait for next mooncake fest, hehe). No need mould (My mother kept all the mould cos she is shifting). 真的很漂亮。

Hi HHBI tried this yesterday and it is delicious. However, mine looks quite ugly, didn't get the clear line in the 'whirlpool' and the colors are not distinctive like yours. I guess it is because I folded it twice after rolling out as you mentioned yours was not as flaky. I do get a very flaky pastry but ugly. :)

I have never seen such beautiful looking mooncakes. I suppose you can use different fillings and turn them into something else, and have them at anytime of year, not just during Mid-Autumn Festival? :)

Hi, awesome instruction. A couple of question: Did you use liquid food colouring, or the gel form? And did yo use some form of a pan / tray for each mooncake to bake in? How many mooncakes did this recipe yield, and could I double it up? Thanks heaps.